


Asië

by Arnediad



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I would like to expound on that craziness in another less smutty fic, Literally nothing is very canon here, Maedhros as a member of the millitary, Mentions of dealing with alcoholism, PTSD, Probably somewhat character studyish, The entire house of Feanor and Fingolfin as members of the millitary, oh no I might be vanilla, pretty much every aspect of sex you'd expect, romantic nsfw in heavy detail, somewhat inexperienced mildly bewildered and heavily appreciative men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:20:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23605195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arnediad/pseuds/Arnediad
Summary: People are not taught, in youth, the hardships of love.Perhaps less are people taught the hardships of loss....And even less than that are they taught the hardships of healing.
Relationships: Maedhros | Maitimo/Original Female Character(s), Maedhros/Vanya(OC)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Asië

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** I am pretty unsure of this fic but it has been crashing around my docs for a few weeks. So fair warning. This gets fairly intimate so, I don't know; I just wanted to do some romantic het and I need practice in the department of het. 
> 
> Quarantine porn? That sounds risky. Saucy gifts? Still risky. For these dark times, I bringeth...distraction of questionable quality. Also, sometimes I just need to write about a healthy relationship. Washeth your hands.

People are not taught, in youth, the hardships of love.

Perhaps less are people taught the hardships of loss.

Even if taught, one does not understand the tenacious, knife-sharp edge that affection rides...the precipice between endurance and oblivion. We want to take love and loss and define them in cloistered singularities that glitter and throb in aching psychic recesses. It is easy to categorize the uncategorical when we would rather label than feel. There is a unity in feeling that society, as a whole, no longer possesses. It is a castoff or perhaps suffocated idealism. ‘Love’ is not a literality, and that is what makes it so tangible. ‘Love’, however, need not be cloistered to a single individual. We can love one another, love the world, the universe as a whole to equal degrees. Discovering such truths is hard...the consequences of accepting such truths is harder still.

_’Such an impossible concept.’_

He closes his eyes and lets the thought go; the air is cold...it flowers before him like mist.

It is commonly cold here; above the dotted village lights that house the family of Fingolfin in a little valley. It is a community nestled in the arms of two embracing mountain ranges; overshadowed by towering pines on three sides and the glittering, rock-strewn expanse of beach down to crashing shore at the fourth. Here...there is paradise...to some degree. Outside of the social obscuration of communal dogma there is peace. The residents are loyal to one another, if occasionally short tempered...but the sun does not set here on terrible, darkened memories. There are no voices crying out in temporal agony in the wind...there is no sand or dust...no charged violence of expectation measured against gaping wounds.

Here, he does not have to worry about measuring equality against equality to make himself a man.

Long he has served in concepts pertaining to patriotism, to loyalty and duty. Faithfully, has he enacted what was asked of him only to be met with scorn and vitriol regarding his position. Because he carries his weapons as one might carry words and they speak for him across endless, howling wastes. There is an uninhibited...yawning ache borne from his time abroad and imprisoned that he has tried to fill as best as he is able. He has been friend...lover...and brother, dashed himself against the rocks of continuity only to be thrown back into a void-esque sea because he could not be too much of one or the other. Eternally...he has bolstered his comrades...dragged them across an endless expanse to the next medic knowing full-well that they would not do the same for him. He is haunted by transgressions borne of indecision...of an inability to glean what is right when, in essence, the universe has taught him there is no solid essence to right or wrong.

They tell you a lot in Basic Training.

They don’t tell you enough.

There is a difference between surveillance and warfare; between peacetime and wartime...essentially. And when you have a war of cataclysmic, universal proportions...it breaks you. Leaves you a wrecked, pondering thing reaching for solace when the only thing around the corner is the next winking barrel of a shotgun camouflaged by moonlight and dyed Teflon. You learn to adapt...even if it’s something you shouldn’t do...for the sake of a greater good that is not _good_ but singular. You learn to wear goggles and a bandanna and you learn to spit as far from your commanding officer as possible, no matter how much it builds up in your mouth. You learn to stand in conditions abhorrent, you learn loyalty to those you might otherwise have seen as entirely distasteful. You learn that rough and weathered is _educated_ and you stick by it. You learn to look ahead even if your eyes feel like caked glass in your forehead from all the sand blowing back through your tear ducts.

You learn you don’t need your tear ducts anymore.

The house of Fëanor had always been military. As the eldest, it was expected of him to enroll...to fall in line and to join the ranks his family had earned through decades of hard work and tight-laced discipline. His father was a war hero, a general, and a leader in the community. People respected him, and thusly he was respected as a byproduct via propagation. It was not questioned whether he would enlist or not, it was expected. Anything else would have been distasteful...and more than that, disloyal. He had fought under his father’s name; wars for oil, for ships and supplies against those they had once counted friends and allies. Such is the way of politics, and through politics military action. He did not question leaving his cousin in the North to bring the battle Eastward...nor did he question whether he would win or lose. When Fëanor died under a blazing hot sun in a hail of artillery he assumed his position and walked into enemy hands because he thought he had the upper hand.

He did not.

He did not, and he was captured and held for many months in a stronghold whose whereabouts he could not name even now. Their enemy was ruthless, survivalistic, much like them but far older. He was tortured for information...his hand removed and his lungs suffused with water over cloth. Months...for months he was kept there until they deemed him useless and hung him over the edge of a dam to die from heat exposure, dehydration, and exhaustion. The solidarity was a relief...the rescue almost was not. Because he had failed. He had failed in _so many_ things and he did not even have his pride to hang onto now. They flew him home to base and patched him up...gave him a medal like it was going to drive away the beasts seething at the back of his brain...like that would somehow make up for his transgressions and his shortcomings. He was dismissed honorably, but nothing could have been more dishonorable.

So he’d come initially...rough...with nightmares on his heels and unable to stay where he used to because the terrain was too similar to the warfront. He spent mere days there...sick unto death until he put his house up for quick sale and moved before closing. Left his possessions at a thrift store and took a road North until he could not go North anymore without using his passport. Ended up in a place near to childhood but not so near that he felt suffocated by it. His car was new but he sold it for half the price, knocked off for a motorbike that could stand the weather and terrain and rented a condo near the wharfs...where the snow fell in the thick across shallow waters and where some family came knocking...eventually...when they realized that despite who he now was...who he was inside had not changed. He’d gone into it because his father did...because it was done in the family. The house of Feanor had always fought for a lost cause...had always declared duty over restiveness...and so he had done...until he couldn’t anymore.

He drank too much.

War will do that to you too, make you cold for anything but that flickering warmth and he swallowed it down in order to numb himself out of everything else. He learned to be functional around the urges; he ignored his phone unless he was in a blackout rage and all he could hear was gunfire. He learned to temper himself...harden himself until he felt as cold and merciless as a bullet exploding out the end of a rifle. His benefits came in and he resented that more, resented the facet of being grounded when he could have gone out in a blaze of glory...or what he saw as glory, in any case. Sometimes, Fingolfin would come in and ask how he was...sometimes he could answer honestly...sometimes he couldn’t. Sometimes Fingon came in and just sat with him; took him out to the docks and he looked over an endless expanse of water and wished to drown. ‘P.O.W.’ they called him; ‘traumatized’ they called him. All he knew is that he was loyal...and when it came down to loyalty…

In war, you learn that loyalties are slurried, dripping lines.

In war, you learn that loyalty does not matter so much as patience.

He was burnt for his position; for his inability to put the enemy in its place. And he had stood amongst shadowed galleys in chains and thought the enemy beautiful when he did not know beauty...not really. ‘Beauty’ is a societal definition that even he had become corrupted by. He didn’t resent Fingon for saving him...not really. It cost his cousin in magnitudes greater than he could possibly imagine to commandeer a chopper and drag him from the hanging precipice of a dam, even if he lost a hand for it. They replaced it...somehow. Not organically but artificially and it was realistic and comfortable but it still felt like _charity_. He was garrisoned until he couldn’t be anymore and when he came to Fingolfin’s little, idyllic town he sometimes thought there was nothing he’d like to have done more than burn it to the ground. He worked obsessively because there was nothing else for him to do, and he knew if he stopped he was going to go postal.

She visited him then.

Rather, she marched up the front of their shared porch when it was 2AM and he was half to hypothermic but too sloshed to move and gave him a scolding so hot he was burning by the end of it. They were, at the time, neighbors in the literal sense but not the social sense. He knew she had a gallery that she ran at the back of her part of the condominium...he knew she had blonde hair and blue eyes...and that she liked a glass of white wine at the end of the day with her cat but that’s all he allowed himself to know. He didn’t trust himself to talk to people anymore, he was too caught up in his own miserable mentality to really understand who she was or why her presence mattered. Sometimes, when he’d stood out too long with a cigarette he’d catch her curtains twitching and he always assumed that she was just making sure he wasn’t out there scoping her door locks.

It didn’t occur to him that he knew her.

He did know her, as it turned out, from childhood. From a time when they lived near to one another and went to the same school. She knew him just by glance because of his ‘stupid red hair’ and his ‘extremely furious scowl.’ He wasn’t, to a great degree, aware of his singular ability to look formidable and cheerful but she told him of it...in later days. He staggered inside that night and slept on the carpet in front of the fire feeling humiliated. The next day she came ‘round with two coffees and a very stubborn expression and he let her in because he feared for the structural integrity of the condo if he didn’t. They sat in front of the hearth and they didn’t talk but it was still comfortable somehow. She took the mugs with her when she left, and he got a little more work done than he usually did before he was itching for another drink...before the screams started up again and the world felt cloistered and close and his phantom hand ached.

_”Vanya.”_

She said this in passing, when he was going down to the market for a sandwich and she’d come up the way with her shopping. She said it over her shoulder but didn’t stop. _He_ stopped and didn’t know what she meant until he realized it was her name. He ate his sandwich by the wharf and tried not to think of sand...but he remembered her name. When he came home she was waiting for him on her side of the porch. It’s a townhouse, of Northern-esque nature; slightly Tudor in appearance but a little mashup. Cleanly split in half...the floor plans are identical, but his half is filled with a patchwork couch, an island kitchenette, a font-facing fireplace...piles of books and a bed and bath in the back. It’s bare save for the books and bare necessities...the books are one of the few things he’s held onto. At the time he unlocked the door and it jingled and he frowned at the bell that had appeared atop the lintel. He’d had bells before, but he didn’t know how _she_ knew he needed bells. She followed him in and sat on his couch like she belonged there and he didn’t know what to do, so he made her a tea and she took it and drank it pretty as you please.

_”Thank you, Mae.”_

Mae.

Only Fingon had ever called him Mae; less now that they’re older. Fingon was the one who suggested he move and he’d done so without much thought. He had a few vague memories of being called ‘Mae’ by others as a youth...but no memories of anyone saying it the way she said it. It was professional and yet somehow deeply gentle. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t hate it. Because he was a little stupid he made himself some tea and sat on the rug because he didn’t feel proper just sitting himself on the couch next to her. She rolled her eyes and slid off the furniture to sit next to him and when he looked at her expressionlessly she smiled at him and it was a little bit like the sun had come and sat next to him. This was an alarming-and fickle-thought so he pushed it away and sipped tea until he remembered he doesn’t particularly care for it. Again, they said nothing, but this time she fell asleep on the rug and he didn’t know what to _do_. He wandered around a bit and hung off the couch but when he went for the liquor cabinet she cracked open an eye and glared at him and that made him self-conscious enough that he just sat down with a book and pretended to read it until he fell asleep too.

When he woke up she was gone.

So was his liquor.

He’d tried to quit before, of course, and had detoxed successfully more than once but to do it involuntarily was an inconvenience. He was angry about it and he nearly stormed over to her house to demand what she was about but he had too much work to do and so he spent the rest of the day so sick he could barely see straight but plowed through things anyway. By the time evening came around he was hanging off the edge of the toilet covered in sweat with images of black fire and searing pain charging ‘round his head like wild horses. She came in then, of course, and handed him washcloths but it wasn’t very sympathetic but they worked through it. It took a week but by the time the weekend came around again he felt a little bit closer to normal and he didn’t itch anymore.

They talked a little more.

 _’A little’_ turned into often...and sometimes he’d go out in the middle of the night to stand by her door until she let him in. Her half of the house was homier than his...she had books too, and paintings. She was good at it...he discovered, been doing it since she was young. She had a beautiful rug he liked to sit on and sometimes he slept there when he couldn’t stand himself anymore...when he was too angry or too upset and she would leave Sinatra on the radio and they didn’t talk about anything before. Fingon came to visit and left looking like he was going to burst into tears from relief and he felt terrible. He wasn’t all there yet, but he didn’t feel like he was in pieces anymore. Sometimes he hiked, sometimes Vanya hiked with him and the mountains were limitless there... beyond him...they stretched on forever. The air was cold and crisp and he didn’t dread the mornings.

Vanya liked lupines and bluebells.

He learned this slowly...with care and with no small measure of idiocy. He was not care _less_ but he could be brash and bold and as fiery as his hair and she would temper him if the time called for it. There were bad days...days when he couldn’t get out of bed for fear of stepping on a nonexistent mine. Days when he was calling out in fevered dreams for people long dead or long abandoned. He was horribly lonely, and he hated himself for being lonely. But Vanya would come and sit next to him on those days...talk softly to him over a mug of tea and a smile and he would forget for a time in the depths of her eyes. It was difficult, because he had never let anyone in to such a degree so quickly...but he wanted to. More than that...she seemed to genuinely like him...scars and all. He didn’t frighten her or disgust her and there were times when he was truly baffled by that. Two weeks bled into a month...sometimes he regressed, sometimes he did things he swore he would never do again. Sometimes he would look at the stars and see nothing but cold winking lights. Sometimes she would bring him soup on those days and make him eat it while she watched and at least his belly was full even if his soul felt entirely empty.

 _”You don’t eat enough.”  
  
  
_ He learned she didn't care about his scars...and she didn't care about his mentality.   
  
He's riddled with them-scars, that is-...some of them self-inflicted..some of them not. Some of them are whispered remnants of a past...of a time when the lines between what was real and what was not were smeared and vibrating things. When she first saw him without his shirt on it was like any other day; she told him to sit down and eat breakfast and when she left he found his tear ducts actually did work, though not like they used to. The first time PTSD hit him hard there, it took him by surprise. He spent two days in bed before she picked his lock and crashed through his living room with flashing eyes and when he grabbed her-not intentionally-because she grabbed _him_ it was a hanging, suspended moment met by his panic and her determined but gentle stubbornness. He was a gibbering, senseless wreck and she was _calm_ and he did not know how she did it. The walls were no longer dunes, the sky was not burning him and there was a patchwork cloak on his shoulders that was not his.

He was wary of attraction because he did not want to dive into things too soon. But she would come in and look at him expectantly. Not overtly tall, but willowy...with a heart shaped face and a gentle smile. If he could place her heritage it would likely be European; England perhaps...he didn’t ask. There was talk of more war, of more upheaval and he wanted to be part of it but he couldn’t be until he was cleared by a therapist and he was reluctant to go. Sometimes he intermingled in parties of Fingolfin’s unearthly standards...moving among faces he barely recognized after such a time like an aimless phantom. He slept restlessly, worked tirelessly on commerce structures and stayed up to date with the news on the television. Sometimes he would watch horrible TV until his brain let him sleep.

It grew between them.

Verily, it grew until he woke up one winter morning with her curled into his chest and decided that if they were going to do this, they were going to do it properly.

And that is what has led him here...clutching at the cold while staring at the lights from the condo ahead. It’s not snowing, but the snow is lying thick...enough that when he lifts his feet to sink a boot in it nearly goes past the lacings. He doesn’t have anything clever to say, but she’s waiting on his couch when he comes in...when the bell jingles and she rises to greet him. Their eyes meet...and it is a suspended thing. He wants to think of clever things to say...he wants to thank her...for being there. There are a thousand things he wants to say, but when he opens his mouth he says only one thing.

“Vanya.”

And she knows. He does not know how she knows it, but she knows, and she almost seems relieved as she crosses the space between them and looks up into his face. Her hands reach up to cradle his cheeks and he leans into a palm. This they have done before...but it has never felt so intimate.

“Mae” she murmurs. “When will you stop doubting yourself?”

He laughs and runs his hands through sunlight-colored locks.

“I suppose never” he says quietly.

The fire is crackling in the hearth...throwing out beams onto the ragged carpet he dug up from a dump sale. It’s warm...and with her, it’s _safe_ ; known. She is fierce in her own way...gentle in others. He doesn’t know about forever, but he does know that now he could know her forever...and never grow tired of it.

“Well then” she replies gently. “I suppose I shall have to have enough faith for both of us.”

He wants to argue, but she kisses him and it’s something he can’t fully process.

He’s sober, and he’s been sober, and it feels good but it feels too good and all of her is radiating a warmth he’s unfamiliar with. They spend a long time as they are...a careful exchange...a gauge of depth. The minutes spin by and as they do the more concrete and grounded in reality this seems. Vaguely, he is conscious of tangling his fingers in her hair so he can mouth along the soft pout of her lower lip. She seems to like that, and he lets his tongue follow it; a tentative, flickering and wet motion and his breath sounds too ragged even to his own ears but she meets his advance with her own.

_Oh._

He moans, and it’s unfettered to some degree. Because he’s been kissed...he has been kissed a thousand times but not in this state...not as he is, fully himself and so hot for it and it’s so intense that it’s a splash behind his eyelids. It bursts there and becomes something golden and contorted but it’s a pleasurable contortion. He was never given the opportunity to date before...to foster romance; he is unused to it...entirely unused to sex save for hasty fumbles with whatever locals he could find in dark alleyways. His hands shudder and she catches one like she can tell and places it at her waist and he thinks he ought to have thought of that...strokes over soft cotton with his thumb before gently tugging her forward just a few inches. Everything is multiplied; wheres’t it felt dull and dismissable before...like scratching an itch but he wants to throw down, he wants to _rut_ against it but he wants it to be good for her as well.

These are warring parallels he is unfamiliar with.

The desire to have pleasure and give pleasure, in any case. Giving is something he is accustomed to, but the _drive_ to _have_ is also incredibly strong. And it is not an inarticulate, tryst-centric sort of having...it is a whole-bodied, connective sort of having. Unconsciously, he licks into her mouth deeper, catches her tongue and sucks on it...throat open for it and the sound that leaves her is musical in nature...a thrumming-humming and there is a flush blooming over his cheeks and his head feels leaden with it. Unconsciously, he rolls his hips and he rolls them _hard_ and contact-and _groan_ , stupidly loud-and _no_ , too much too soon and he draws back to apologize but she shakes her head and the cradle of her hips arch up to meet his and he feels like he’s been socked in the gut. He’s fairly sure the exclamation that falls from him certainly sounds like it.

She sways her hips back and forth and his mouth hangs open like an idiot and he is _shaking_. Worse is the fact that he’s shaking and trying to stop it but it’s something up-up in the air and they’re kissing again but he’s sloppy about it, nearly mindless and of course he’s done this before, but he has-again-only fantasized about it like this...without war...without haste or lack of hope...and he doesn’t know how to process it. He’s palming her backside mindlessly, hands clenching over denim-covered glory and she strokes a hand through his hair, cradles his cheek and he breathes out hard through his nose...eyelids heavy even as he chases that movement, as he grinds against her and he’s going to _come_. He’s going to embarrass himself if he doesn’t stop-

“-Stop thinking so much” she laughs, and it’s tender...it’s always tender and affectionate and careful, and he does not feel as if he _deserves_ this. He thinks maybe he’s grasping her hip too hard but she just walks him backwards. Nudges him and then pushes him playfully but not with any great force until he’s somehow stumbled his way onto the patchwork couch. He sits there and acts more stupid and she just smiles, he _loves_ her smile...it’s like sunshine and sunflowers and then she’s over him and he’s kissing her smile...swallowing it up and it’s pooling warm and low in his belly even as his hands skate up her waist, as he cradles her face as she settles into the cradle of his hips and rolls her own...long, slow, purposeful.

_”Uhnnnn…”_

It’s a greedy sound, the way it spills from him. It feels rich and sated yet not...like the guilty eating of chocolate and she makes a satisfied, gentle noise in response as he mouths just under her chin; latches on and sucks a rose there even as he rolls his hips again, as his eyes nearly roll back in his head at the weighty, gravid sensation and he tries to shake his head to clear himself of it but it’s better than being drunk, it’s better than _anything_ and so he does it again. They find a fit for it where he’s rolling right up into the core of her and he can feel the heat even through the cargo pants he’s wearing, he can _taste_ her arousal and it makes him feel _wild_ , almost unhinged really.

There’s a tightening, sensation he knows, below, and she’s slipped a hand under his shirt and her fingers are dancing up his chest and he squirms unconsciously; near to writhing with it and her gaze on him is so focused, like she can’t get enough of it and he wants to ask her if she’s got a vision problem or something because no one has looked at him like this, as he is, and looked at him like he’s _attractive._ His hips are bucking mindlessly at this point and the groans coming from his throat are low rumbles mixed with occasional, garbled supplicative phrases.

“I’m not-” she cups his cheek then and kisses him long and slow, and he nips her tongue because it’s playful and because it’s _warm_ and he _can_. “I _can’t_ -” he stutters uselessly.

“Too close?” she murmurs, and it's amused, but it's a gentle amusement, patient.

He wants to tell her she’s wonderful, but he doesn’t have the brain for it so he just nods instead. Her hair is a golden waterfall over her shoulder...tumbling down like a cloud of sunshine to intermingle with the red in his. He tangles his fingers in it-without pulling-because it’s an anchoring focus. They settle in their movements and now it’s mere kissing...deep and steady and he’s swimming in it...addicted to it and his hands venture up her blouse...dip into soft fabric and she makes an encouraging noise before she sits up to straddle him and pull it over her head.

He spends some minutes staring.

Mostly because he has not been offered such a view so directly, but also because he doesn’t know how to begin. She is sure of it; even as she lets him practically devour her with his eyes she merely waits...patient, a hand behind her back to thumb the clasp and then the brazier is tossed aside and he cannot help but touch now. Cannot help but let his fingers run across the swell of shapely flesh even as she arches her back slightly. They are giving beneath his palms...warm and heavy and his breath hitches but he can barely hear it.

Here, he can place his nose here, just beneath and inhale as he lets one hand press against the base of her spine. The heat of her radiates beneath his lips and she is rocking against him...subtly. Peeking upwards at her he notes that her lips are parted, like she’s waiting for him to make a move even though he feels as if he’s _far_ surpassed all boundaries of what he’s privileged to do already.

Slowly...deliberately, he tilts his chin just-so, sits up somewhat more and hunches over so he can take a rose-colored bud into his mouth. It’s a gradual movement, smooth on his lips and under his tongue and he sucks and she makes an encouraging, gratuitous noise and it whiplashes through him. Her hair sways over him to tickle his cheek as he furthers the movement, as he releases somewhat so he can tongue over the aureole before hunkering down once more and they shudder together.

His hips buck up involuntarily and he’s so tight at this point he can barely stand it; physically, a rubber-band, if he could compare it to anything and she tastes vaguely of salt, and vaguely of something that is singularly of her. There is moisture pooling in his mouth and he runs the trembling palm of the hand opposite his focus up her belly so he can play with the other, so he can roll a tightened nub between his fingertips. The crackle of the fire is distant at this point but somehow overtly loud; it is a parallel between ragged breath, ragged groans and breathy or unctuous sounds as he feels full of it, as it becomes a slow...heart-beat esque thing and he _wants_ -

"-Here." Breathy, a bit...insufflated and stuttering and he doesn't hear it at first, or doesn't register it because he's so utterly _gone_. "Mae, here-" he does not think that she should really want this but _"-Come here."_ She's kissing him again and he responds automatically, cups her with both hands as she does until he's forced to pull back and help her get his sweater and undershirt over his head.

A shock.

Her hands, that is, on his naked chest...because he'd waited a _long time_ for someone else to touch him there and it feels a bit like a betrayal and a bit like a surrender. Graceful, painter's hands trace over his abdomen, blue eyes watching as the flesh beneath them twitches in involuntary response even as it all feels like fire. She graces each and every inch of him with equal focus; lingers over his collarbones and presses a thumb in the crease 'fore his elbow and somehow it's both a thorough study and a thorough madness. By the time she cups him through his pants he's aching and that's a _miracle_ , because he didn’t think he could actually do that; the nightmares have kept him from that area of himself entirely. He pushes into it even as he fumbles with the catch to her jeans, as he lets his hand settle low-palm against skin-on her abdomen and pushes down...down below her bellybutton to the cradle of her thighs.

"Are you sure-" he stops because his voice is so thick he barely recognizes it. Something in her eyes answers with a kind of frenetic fervor, and he swallows. "I might disappoint you" he says roughly.

That is the extent of his ability to articulate, and apparently it's lackluster because she looks at him like he's fallen over a houseplant and gotten hung up in the laundry before getting off of him to peel off her jeans in succinct motion. This is glorious for one, because naked, and two because he nearly swallows his tongue and he didn't know that was possible. Her undergarments are the same color as her bra, but she shucks those off quickly enough and he doesn't get a good enough look before she's pulling down his cargo pants and throwing his socks somewhere-the lampshade, they land on the lampshade-and climbing over him again. Some part of him acknowledges that he has a lapful of beautiful but most of him is short circuiting because he doesn't wear boxers normally.

There is an intimacy to the nude that he’s not accustomed to. He is, ultimately, accustomed to sex but in different ways...in ways that are not so intimate as this and she lets him adjust; let’s him trace his fingers down the curvature of her physicality...all soft, giving skin...heated beneath phalanges, flushed with pique. He isn’t aware of his fixation, of the mesmerized draw of his brow or the slight hang of his jaw until she giggles and grabs his nose-though not hard-to revert his frenetic focus. Licking mindlessly beneath the soft swell of a breast, fingers kneading a buttock, he settles with swallowing and letting his hand settle over the curve of a hip, fingers tracing the curvature of her spine even as he sits up and carefully-giving her plenty of time to stop him-pushes her back into the pillows opposite.

Here, at least, he can operate with some modicum of direction.

Meaning, of course, that he can give pleasure before being absolutely and utterly selfish. He settles between her legs and steals a series of abbreviated kisses from her mouth, lingering for mere moments before placing several dozen more in a slow march downwards. It's awkward...certainly not graceful because he hasn't done this in a while and certainly not like this. And he doesn't care about the factor of shaven, or not, not really; not when he can clench his fingers about her thighs and slide a pillow beneath the small of her back so he can take his time. He can feel her ankles nudging, crossed, at his back and he waits a moment to savor the warmth of nearness before she tilts her hips and he descends to lick up the soft part of her sex.

_"Good."_

It's whispered supplicatively, hand tangling in his hair even as he tongues at the firmish hood of her clit and color explodes over his palate. He feels himself shudder and it's cold-hot roil down his spine...one that makes his back a greedy arch before he regains himself again, forces himself not to grind against the sofa cushions even as he settles further, as his nose nudges heated passion and her thighs tighten around him, as he flicks his tongue experimentally-once, twice-and then sucks and a pale hand grabs one of the back cushions...a supplicative noise falling from parted lips as the other tightens in his hair.

The pull against his scalp is vaguely interesting-feels good, in any case-and he answers with a slurred, vague supplication before returning to the task at hand. Before...the act of oral was vaguely pleasing, something tied up in stress and haste. Now, however, it’s a flood of sensations proffered through sight, sound, and taste. He can’t, if he’s entirely forthcoming, decide what is better; the way her breath hitches, the manner in which her back arches and falls whenever he does something particularly pleasing, or the inveigling, sensual zest lacing every corner of his mouth. Moving lower, swirling his tongue about clenching heat, he hovers a moment...breaths out to steady himself and she shivers.

A haze of delirium.

The act of it...in any case. He spends long minutes there...lapping at a well of insouciance, drinking it in while he cups her full-handed above, rubs betwixt with two fingers and she arches just-so at her peak, gasps his name and he hums indulgence into wettish glory. He relinquishes her left thigh at some length; after she’s settled some, licks middle and forefinger almost blindly before he slides the former into her at a slow pace...takes the time to advance in a slow circulant motion. Her pearl he finds with his mouth once again, sucks in a soft, idle rhythm that mirrors the pace at which he moves his finger...one finger...two and she clenches about him, the cradle of her hips arcing to take him further as he twists both digits; rubs upwards and along and groans as she gasps and her head thumps back onto the couch cushions. At this point he’s past aching; he’s sliding against the fabric of the couch in a desperate attempt not to rut into it until he comes and his head feels the entirty of a flush...feels heavy...intoxicated by the scent, taste, and sound of her.

“Come here then” she murmurs, and he practically falls flat on his face to crawl up her torso.

He hesitates to kiss her but she drags him in, sucks his tongue into her mouth and arches and he’s sliding against her...the head of his length dragging against soft, wet folds and he reacts instinctively, spine dipping to have her fully before he pulls back once more, breath hissing through his teeth even as her thighs hug his sides more fully. It’s not an entirely carnal feeling either, it’s warm...it feels cradled...it makes his chest ache strangely and he’s a little bit afraid of it. He nudges his nose into the soft of a breast again but it’s more affectionate...considering, when he licks it's not entirely desirous.... more to memorize the taste of her on his tongue.

“You could maybe not be so careful” she mutters into his hair and he huffs an awkward, uncertain laugh even as he goes up on his knees a little bit so he can angle her hips in a manner that is-or so he hopes-comfortable for both of them.

She’s spread out below him...a gossamer spill of epidermis against patchwork faux-leather. Her physicality moves with him, hips tilting as he flexes his hips experimentally...uses two fingers to reach down and part soft piquancy. Again...she drags him down for a kiss again as he moves to enter her. Teeth bite into his tongue-though not hard-and maybe that’s a good thing because that slow...initial descent is both Aman and _Mandos_. It’s a warmth swallowing the whole of him, pulsating and iron-hot and entirely overwhelming. He feels himself stiffen...feels his loins draw tight in what feels like an inevitable release, but she hushes him. Fully seated, a slim-fingered hand presses against the small of his back and keeps him there...in undulating glory. Panting...he’s panting into her neck and he is aware of how ungraceful it is but he mouths at the soft hollow of her throat anyway even as they settle...as the whole of her is made known to him. He curls into her, burrows himself into the soft-gentle give of her physicality and when she rocks gently to indicate he can move it is with both relief and reluctance that he does so.

In the end, instinct is a carnal driver.

Despite his reticence, he is still able to keep an easy pace...one that he staggers; fast and slow, hard-not too hard-and deep. He gets a hand under her and kneads once more at the curvature of a buttock as she clenches around him; as that tight heat bubbles forth and threatens to undo him even as she whispers his name like a prayer. It feels wrong...somehow, that anyone should say his name like that...wondering and soft and he nips mindlessly at the fingers held to his lips before sucking on the curvature of lifeline on palm. It is so _good_ , so perfect, but more than that _whole_. He wants to tell her that but he can hardly keep his eyes open let alone form words. She comes and her back bows, the slope of her abdomen a beautiful arc and he makes a low, hysterical noise in the back of his throat as she writhes.

Their pace isn’t hurried but the buildup to the culmination of their union has left his control shot absolutely to oblivion. She’s rubbing her fingers against the nape of his neck as he pauses to grind up into the core of her, the pressure of him bearing down on her clit as he does so and he grunts low and stuttered as she breathes ecstacy into to the sensitive shell of his ear. He makes mistakes, of course; she has to correct him at times; show him what feels good and what doesn’t. He’s not always able to keep pace and he has to brace his palms against the armrest of the sofa in order to maintain continuity. Twice...he brings her to her pinnacle before the pressure shaking through his thighs and blooming at his spine becomes overwhelming. He makes a good effort to hold out, but he’s flush with it...can feel the swollen nature of it encompassing every facet of his desire and she’s whispering in his ear again and-

“-Coming” he groans out, his back arcing. “I’m-!”

“Come” she laughs gently into his hair and that’s all it takes.

White floods every aspect of his vision as heat rockets up from his nethers...it starts there, spreads out to the cradle of his hips and down his legs and he’s groaning something low and rough and ingratiating into the soft of her hair even as his hips jerk mindlessly; snapping hard and then settling when he tries to maintain not too-much measure of force. He chokes on it, rolls with it like a boat shaken by a storm miles out to sea. It is a spidered vein of lines behind his eyelids and when it’s done he shivers with it...tucks himself under her chin and she hums something gentle...something lackadaisical but deeply affectionate.

“I’m not any good for you” he murmurs, the fingers of his artificial hand tangling in her hair even as she shifts beneath him...sleepy and sated. “You could do better.”

Vanya laughs and it shivers through him, makes his eyelids flutter even as the fire pops before them in a shower of sparks.

“Mae” she says gently. “I knew the minute I lay eyes on you that I was going to get you somewhere where your eyes didn’t scream for peace every time they looked at me.” She nudges his chin until he will look at her...exhausted...grateful, and not a little bit bewildered. “I could not do better” she whispers, threading a hand through scarlet locks. “There’s no one in this world like you...and to Mandos whoever thinks otherwise.”

Maedhros thinks that things could be worse.

He’s right.

But they don’t become so...and he learns to live not dreading every corner he turns.

He learns to heal.

**Author's Note:**

>  **A/N take two:** PSA: condoms are good, for everybody, across all spectrums. Use 'em. Stay healthy folks.  
> Consider this my apology for not updating other fics, I am very crunched for time. 
> 
> **Title Translation:** Quenya- _healing_.


End file.
